I very much desire to know whether my work has done any good; whether my socks are ever worn in a battle; and most of all, I desire to know how the noble fellow looks that wears them.  Therefore I beg you to answer my letter, and also to send me your photograph, if you can conveniently.

Now, my dear soldier, be brave and true, and, above all, do not run away from the rebels with my socks on your feet.  You may retreat when your officers order you to retire; but if you are a coward, and find yourself compelled to run away, please pull them off before you do so, for I should die with mortification if I thought I had knit a pair of socks for a Union soldier to run away in.

    Truly yours, for our flag and our country.

    LILIAN ASHFORD.

“Well, if that gal ain’t a trump, then there ain’t no snakes in Virginny!” exclaimed Hapgood.  “She’s got the true grit, and no mistake.”

“That’s so,” replied the recipient of the gift, thoughtfully, as he bent down, and began to pull off the sock which encased his left foot.

“What are you doing?” demanded Hapgood, surprised at this new movement of his companion.

“I can’t wear these socks yet, uncle,” replied he.

“Why not?”

Don’t she say she wants them worn in a battle?”

“Tom, you are a little fool!” added the veteran, petulantly.  “Are you going with cold feet just to please a silly gal, whose head is as full of moonshine as an egg is of meat.  Put on the socks, and keep your feet warm.  If you don’t, I’ll write to her, and tell what a fool you are.”

Tom did put them on, but he could not help feeling that uncle Hapgood, as he was familiarly called in the camp, did not understand and appreciate his sentiments.  The socks seemed to be too precious to be worn in the vulgar mud of Maryland.  To him there was something ethereal about them, and it looked a little like profanation to put any thing emanating from the fairy fingers of the original of that photograph, and the author of that letter, upon his feet.

“Now you act like a sensible fellow, as you are, Tom,” said Hapgood, as the sergeant put on his army brogans.

“Well, uncle, one thing is certain:  I never will run away from the rebels with these socks on,” added Tom, with a rich glow of enthusiasm.

“If Gen’l McClennon don’t stir his stumps pretty soon, you’ll wear ’em out afore you git a chance to run away.”

Tom, almost for the first time since he had been in the army, wanted to be alone.  With those socks on, it seemed just as though he was walking the streets of the New Jerusalem, with heaven and stacks of silver-fringed and golden-tinged clouds beneath his feet, buried up to the eyes in floods of liquid moonshine.

If “grandma” really thought that Lilian Ashford was a silly girl, and if Lilian really supposed so herself, it must be added, in justification of her conduct, that she had given the soldier boy a new incentive to do his duty nobly, and kindled in his soul a holy aspiration to serve God and his country with renewed zeal and fidelity.